The Healing Power of Poetry in Counseling

By Sheror Caton Moore

The Healing Power of Poetry in Counseling leads its readers to the well that flows with the powerful and beautiful words of scriptural poetry. By encouraging the reader to listen to the poetic voices in Job, Psalm, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon, Dr. Sheror Caton Moore, a poet and Christian counselor who specializes in noutheticBible-basedcounseling, provides a reminder of how God ministers to His people through words. In particular, she explores how poetic words can bring comfort and healing.
Each of the twelve chapters in The Healing Power of Poetry in Counseling addresses a particular theme that speaks to the issues that arise in daily life. Topics include sin, forgiveness and living, change, encouragement and hope, times of grief, inspiration, fellowship, marriage, laughter, aging, and healing. Chapters draw together passages from the Bible with the authors original poetry and her perspectives as a counselor.
The Healing Power of Poetry in Counseling speaks powerfully to individuals whose calling is to counsel others, offering guidance for lifting up the encouragement the Holy Spirit has embedded in the poetic words of the Bible. Whether you are a counselor or someone who desires to learn more about the approaches of nouthetic counseling, The Healing Power of Poetry in Counseling will share potent and grace-filled words and thoughts with you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781490772691

Sheror Caton Moore

Sheror Caton Moore is an ordained minister and an award-winning poet whose work appears in several national publications. Her poem “Only the Ice Cream Shows,” also the title of her first book, won her critical acclaim from the American Poetry Association in 1984. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in ministry and a doctoral degree in nouthetic Christian counseling. She founded LIGHT UNTO MY PATH MINISTRIES in Montevallo, Alabama, in the early 1990s.

Book preview

FOREWORD

The Healing Power of Poetry in Counseling

When the apostle John laid his head on the breast of Jesus, his ear was next to God’s heart. It has been said that this is the position of God’s poets. "Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved." John 13:23 NKJV

God’s poets give us words that live as well as words to live by. This is so perfectly exampled by the poets in the Holy Scriptures; Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.

The language and rhythm of poetry touches the tender places of one’s heart and lifts the spirit in a way that nothing else can. As a poet and a Christian Counselor, I have recognized the healing power of poetry for years and used it liberally in counseling. As an example, I offer the poem Clean Windows used as the theme at a spring ladies retreat that I hosted.

Clean Windows

I looked out of my window

And saw my neighbor’s clothes

hanging on her line….

They were dingy and dirty looking, not

nearly as clean as mine.

I felt so sorry for her in my self-righteous

little way.

How awful it must be to hang them out

day after day

For all the world to see –

oh, how embarrassing that must be.

I decided one day to wash my windows

to a clean, bright shine –

Low and behold, her laundry looked

cleaner than mine.

Sheror Caton Moore

This poem addresses the issues of cleaning our houses and yet not getting into the deep cleaning called for in scripture as shown in Luke 11:39-40 NIV.

Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?

The study goes on to describe how the Holy Spirit comes into our lives and goes straight for the closet where we have packed problems away for years. We put them in the very back of the darkest corner then close the door and decide to deal with them later. Meanwhile, no one will see them. All the while, those small problems eat away at us until they are huge problems. Unconfessed sin puts one on a downward spiral that only God can lift upward. Secular counseling cannot lift the spirit in a person’s life as does God’s Word and poetry.

CHAPTER ONE

The Problem is Sin

The Christian minister must be willing and able to assume the full task to which God has called him or her; that of ministering to men and women who suffer from the miseries that stem from personal sins.

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord, Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool. Isaiah 1:18 NIV

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

I Corinthians 6:9-11 NIV

Sin

I have seen sin, in my life and in that of others.

I’ve seen it separate families and break the heart of mothers.

I’ve seen it turn father against son

and tear down relationships one by one.

The devil will have you begin

by indulging in one little sin.

And before you know what’s happened to you, that sin